Nikkei. Bioenergy Corp., a Tokyo-based food-waste processing company, will start using biogas produced by the fermentation of food waste as a fuel in vehicles that collect the waste by the end of March 2009.

A revised version of Japan’s Food Recycling Law went into effect in December 2007, setting higher targets food-related companies need to attain in fiscal 2012. Bioenergy is a joint venture between Ichikawa Kankyo Engineering Co., Kaname Kogyo Co. and San-R (3R, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Corporation), formed to produce power from food waste.

Bioenergy was the site of the world’s first project to generate and market power from a direct fuel cell operating on anaerobic digester gas from a food recycling facility.

Bioenergy...plans to spend about 400 million yen [US$3.9 million] in fiscal 2008 and 2009 to install at its plant the necessary facilities capable of filling about 40-50 cars a day with biogas.

Bioenergy will use adsoprtion technology from the newly formed Biogas Net Japan to refine and clean the digester gas to automotive quality.

Comments

Do this on a large scale and make pipeline grade methane. Natural gas methane can be made from biomass gasification or biodigesters. It does not matter which, if you bring it all up to pipeline grade and distribute it like natural gas has been distributed for years.

That allows us to use natural gas for the many things that we use it for today as well as automobiles tomorrow. The U.S. produces 85% of our natural gas but only 35% of our oil. If we start to make methane and pipe it, we can provide all of our gas needs and power cars as well.

I read that when natural gas prices were very high, the gas companies did not even bother removing the other components of natural gas. Ethane, butane and propane were left in the gas stream, because it was not worth it to get them out. This was harder on the pumps and tended to clog and soot burners. Making our own methane could actually improve the quality of the pipelined product.

If the us can just take a cue from these guys and get the U.S. off the oil. I think that something like this could be the holy grail of energy needs in the u.s. It's like we all win.

People in the U.S. are fat and lazy so we go to restaurants to make our food for us. Which causes them to have more and more waste which they need to get rid of and get some company to pick it up. If the corporate heads of these restaurants decide to do it they can win kudos for being more green and get some business that way. Eventually GM and the big 3 will see the silver lining and make vehicles that can run on this biofuel.
The companies making the fuel will be making their money both ways from selling to the consumer and picking up the waste for a fee.

It's not like we don't have a couple of hundred people already doing all across the U.S. My only worry is getting it not to freeze at low temperatures. But that is why we have chemical engineers. I leave it to them to figure that part out.